gramme, led to a massive fall in the fortunes of the Ratner
Group.
Both these examples illustrate a failure to manage strategic credi-
bility effectively, especially with respect to the influence market
domain. Work by Higgins and Diffenbach^21 has identified strategic
credibility as a critical issue impacting on the influence market
domain. They see strategic credibility as the result of the interplay
of four key factors: a firm’s strategic capability, past corporate
performance, communication of corporate strategy to key
stakeholders, and the credibility of the firm’s top management
team – especially the firm’s chief executive officer. They argue that
management of these four key areas enables a firm to improve its
strategic credibility. This strategic credibility is especially
important as adverse events occur from time to time. The
relationships that an organization builds over time, together with
the strategic credibility it establishes in the marketplace, will have a
very significant impact on how an adverse situation is perceived by
both influence and customer markets. In particular, the business
press and the general media may respond very differently,
depending on whether the organization has high or low strategic
credibility.
The response of Johnson & Johnson following the Tylenol disaster
is a good example of how an organization established strategic cred-
ibility amongst key members of the influence market domain (as
well as with other of the six markets). When someone tampered
with the contents of Tylenol in drug stores in the USA, leading to the
death of several people, the manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, was
able to benefit from the strategic credibility which it had already
established with influence markets before the event. This, together
with the adoption of appropriate responses following the event,
caused observers to conclude that Johnson & Johnson dealt
extremely well with their influence markets and by doing so the
company successfully avoided a potentially disastrous outcome for
their business.
Developing relationships with influence markets
The previous discussion has outlined many of the potential groups
in the influence market domain who may be important to an organ-
ization. Identification of relevant groups within the influence
244 Relationship Marketing